I Believe in Believing

By Cathy Patterson

We all face difficulties in life..sometimes we cant seem to let go, move on and get to that better place. Sometimes we feel like we are stuck in neutral for no apparent reason. Sometimes something can happen in our life and we just cant seem to get it together.

In I Believe In Believing author Cathy Patterson writes about the many areas of life ..love, unhealthy relationships, fear, cancer, angels, reaching our limit, addictions, diets, sex, unforgiveness and many, many more. Each chapter is written to help the reader have a better sense of well being and get to a better place in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512701487

Cathy Patterson

Cathy Patterson works as a psychiatric nurse at Mercy Hospital in Saint Louis, Missouri.

Book preview

1

WHY?

M y youngest brother and older sister had gone to bed. My mother, younger brother, and I were roasting marshmallows on the stove. I heard an awful snoring noise coming from the bathroom. My mother knocked on the bathroom door, and there was no answer. She opened the door and saw my father, kneeling over the commode. Blood covered the walls, and he did not respond when we talked to him. I ran next door and asked the neighbor to call an ambulance; we didn't have a telephone. My father died on the way to the hospital that night. My mother was left alone to raise four children, ages ten, eight, six, and three. Why?

It was very difficult for my mother to raise us. Looking back, I realize how depressed she was all those years. She became very thin and smoked to keep herself going. She would go back to bed when we left for school and get back up before we came home. I felt compassion for her but didn't know how to help her. I looked forward to the day when I would go to college and have a more normal life.

I met a wonderful man in college and married him. Over the next twenty-nine years, we had four children. I developed my career as a nurse and enjoyed seeing him advance in his career. I was absolutely crazy about my husband, and everyone knew it. I loved everything about him. One evening he took me for a drive and stopped at a park. My life changed forever that night. He told me he was leaving me and wanted a divorce. Why?

Though these situations are different, both left me feeling sad, abandoned, and even hopeless at times. I could spend the rest of my life trying to figure out why or turn around and walk in a new direction. What helped me most was the day I came home from work and was so distraught I cried, I have lost everything, everything.

A friend of my son's said to me, No you haven't. I knew she was going to tell me I still had God, and I knew that was true. But instead she said, You still have you! Those words changed my life. It was my path to healing and a new beginning. No matter what is happening in your life today, you still have you, and nobody can take that away.

2

PLEASE STOP TELLING ME TO BE HAPPY

M ost of us remember as children getting hurt, crying, and hearing a parent say, Don't cry. Maybe you remember coming home from school, feeling sad, and hearing a friend say, Don't be sad. As adults, we often make others uncomfortable when we express these emotions. Have you ever wondered why? I am not sure if it is because of how we were responded to as children or if it has more to do with the emotions themselves.

There are over one hundred emotions. I think that is absolutely amazing! The problem is we want everybody to be happy. You may feel really happy when you get that new car and sadder than ever when you dent it. Happy is an emotion that can be very fleeting. I remember not being able to feel that emotion for more than a year. I lost my ability to laugh. I still remember the Saturday morning I again experienced the feeling of being happy. I continued to do things to help myself feel that emotion more, but I did not try to be happy. It just doesn't work that way.

A counselor once helped me understand how important emotions are in our lives and how to learn to allow yourself to feel them. He said, When you feel angry, let yourself feel angry. It was the first time I remember being told it was okay to feel angry. He explained to me we all have a right to our feelings and don't have to suppress them.

Suppressing your feelings can lead to depression. Those are your feelings; they belong to you. It may irritate the people in your life when you respectfully tell them to stop telling you how to feel. I like to say it like this: I feel overwhelmed. I know you may not understand, but that is how I feel.

A really good book that can help if you struggle with feeling angry or have difficulty even feeling that emotion is The Dance of Anger. It uses the example of a seesaw to explain that when you begin to change the dynamics in relationships by expressing your feelings, it may make some people uncomfortable. If you are the person who sits at the bottom of the seesaw and does all the work, the person on the other end may not like the changes.¹ A good example would be if your children tell you at dinner they don't like what you cooked. Tonight you allow yourself to feel annoyed and then tell them they can help cook dinner tomorrow night, and maybe they will like that better. You have allowed yourself to feel the emotion of annoyance and responded appropriately. Often a parent will respond with something like, I am sorry. What would you like? I know that because I was that parent. The most important thing in the world for me was to make my children happy. Now I know how important it is to allow children to feel emotions and then respond to them in an appropriate way.

Constantly looking for happiness is hard work. It is much healthier to look for ways to have a sense of well-being. That happens differently in each of us. I now allow myself to feel the emotion and then look for positive ways to deal with it. For example, when I start to pull into a parking spot and someone cuts me off, I allow myself to feel annoyed for a moment. Then I look for a new place to park and let go of feeling annoyed. Why? Well, why would I continue to invest so much negative emotion into someone I don't know and who maybe didn't even realize what he or she did? It is also an opportunity to experience patience toward someone. This helps me get back my own sense of well-being.

As you practice allowing yourself to honestly feel your emotions, you will learn to express yourself in a more positive way and continue to maintain your sense of well-being. Nothing has freed me more than allowing myself to feel so many emotions and then finding ways to deal with them. Sometimes I make necessary changes in my life. Let me give you an example. The highway I take to work really backs up at one place. I would feel so frustrated, fearing I would be late for work. I could feel my blood pressure rise, and I would break out in a sweat. Then I started to leave just ten minutes earlier and found there was no backup. I no longer feel frustrated and also get a better parking place at work.

How wonderful it is that we have over one hundred available emotions. I hope you will enjoy understanding your emotions, find positive ways to express your feelings, and continue to develop a sense of well-being, one of the greatest gifts in this life.

3

ANGELS: ARE THEY REAL?

A bsolutely! I thought in the spirit of things, with the holiday seasons always just around the corner, it would be good to talk about those awesome angels.

Several years ago, I decided to read Billy Graham's book Angels. It was one of those books I couldn't put down; I probably read it in fewer than twenty-four hours. I kept thinking, I never knew this before. A lot of things started making sense to me. With all the interest in angels, Dr. Graham decided to research the subject himself. As I was reading his book, there were times I thought even Dr. Graham might have been a little surprised by what he found. Angels are spiritual beings created by God to work on our behalf. We have angels specifically assigned to us, which I think is absolutely awesome. We are not to pray to them or worship them. But we are to have an awareness they are behind the scenes, working on our behalf. It is another way God demonstrates His love and caring nature toward us.²

My daughter had tonsillitis again. She went to school, I called the doctor, and he called in her prescription. By the time I received the return phone call from the doctor's office, it was time for me to leave for work, because I was working the evening shift. I left my daughter a signed check and a note telling her to pick up her prescription when she got home from school. I was halfway through my shift when I noticed I had many missed phone calls from my daughter. When I called her, she was panicked. She stated she had taken the check to Walmart, but when she got to the pharmacy, she no longer had it. She frantically searched everywhere. She even called her best friend, who helped her search to no avail. Her friend lent her the money for the script and asked my daughter to spend the night at her home since she was so upset. I said that would be fine. I had four more hours to work, and I would have to use compartmentalization (something I will share about in a future chapter) to make it until 11:30 p.m.

On the way home, I started thinking about what was ahead for me. A blank signed check floating around somewhere. Does it get much worse? As I walked in my back door, I turned on the light and saw there was a new message on the answering machine. As I listened to it, I just couldn't believe it. An elderly woman stated she had gone to the pharmacy at Walmart to get a prescription but then realized she didn't have any. She said she saw a piece of paper on the floor. Because she has poor vision, the woman wasn't sure what it was at first. As she leaned over, she saw the signed blank check. She kept saying, That poor girl who lost this check. She went on to say she hurried home to call and let me know she had the check. She ended the message with, "Now, no matter how late you get home, Cathy [she knew my name and number from the check], you call me, so I